208 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



great, and collective action in settlement is more likely to give 

 you the neighbours that you want for further co-operation. Qui 

 a bon voisin a bon matin. Look at the socialist settlements in the 

 United States, and the Moravian and other religious settlements 

 both in the Old World and the New. The people are happy, 

 neighbourly, and they thrive. When I was consulted by the 

 Zionist Committee in London anent the organisation of co-operative 

 credit societies for the benefit of their new settlers — mainly Russians 

 — in Palestine, I naturally first suggested that they should place 

 themselves in communication with the Jewish Agricultural and 

 Industrial Aid Society, endowed by Baron Hirsch, which has set 

 itself a congenial task and had at that time in the United States 

 for its chief director a native of Russia, who could best guide the 

 Russian settlers, as not only being of their own religion but also 

 knowing their language and their ways. The answer given to me 

 was : " But we want to settle our people in communities." The 

 Jewish Aid Society makes no point of that. I think the Zionist 

 Committee are right. 



Our new settlers — this, I think we may take for granted — will want 

 co-operation. And there is no co-operation more easily organised 

 than that which begins at the start, being, so to speak, built up on 

 a co-operative foundation. Now, with regard to co-operation, Sir 

 Daniel Hall is perfectly right in urging that our would-be organisers 

 must not make a mistake in plying folk perpetually with the hack- 

 neyed argument only that by means of co-operation they will save 

 so much on the purchase of necessaries. That saving is an incidental 

 benefit. But to practical-minded men it makes but a poor lure. 

 Co-operation means a good deal more than purely distribution. 

 The main benefit in the gain is to be got in countless ways, in large 

 affairs as in small, in daily life, by that collective action which planes 

 the way for work and business and happy living such as would be 

 unattainable without it. There is common work to do. There is 

 buying and selling. There are things to be kept in common — 

 machinery, implements — it may be horses. It will not be every 

 one to whom a common steam-plough, or tractor, or threshing 

 machine, such as small men can command the service of only by 

 co-operation, will be of advantage. The cost of acquisition and 

 maintenance would be too great. But there are also smaller 

 implements, which may well be kept in common, that will be needed. 

 There are gristmills and the like. And horse labour wants to be 

 shared — as it very successfully is in co-operative settlements — say, 

 Sir Richard Winfrey's in Norfolk and Lincolnshire. And there is 



